It’s not difficult to see how technological advancements are changing the landscape at which businesses, regardless of industry, need to operate. The major confluence of factors like capacity of computing power, amount of available data, and rapidly shifting consumer behavior has birthed threats to what used to be the status quo.
Formerly unshakeable industries like traditional media, and retail have been forced to adapt to the changes — and fast. This type of paradigm shift has led to an increasing tendency for corporations to forge partnership with startups — a practice they were reluctant to do so just years ago.
To counter the threats brought about by new kinds of business logic, larger, more established firms have increasingly opened up to increased exchanges with the startup ecosystem.
As noted by IESE Business School, by nature, startups have been found to be better at shortening innovation cycles, exploiting technology, enhancing business models, and inventing new ones more quickly than corporations.
Startup environments are typically lightly structured firms that are more willing to bypass existing organizational models, and hierarchies — especially if it leads to more effective solutions. This organizational flexibility can be extremely helpful for corporations that frequently find it difficult to implement internal disruptive innovation.
Such collaborations afford bigger firms a significant advantage over more rigid competitors that are reluctant to embrace emerging technologies and innovative operational models.
And the benefits go both ways, as startups that may find difficulty in areas like accessing new markets, lack or resources and partners, and a limited workforce — can benefit greatly from having access to valuable resources, as well as sales and supply chain opportunities that larger firms can offer.
The emergence of companies like The Heart, a collaboration center that helps connect corporations with ready-to-scale startups, is proof that relationships between the two are becoming increasingly important in today’s changing world.
At their core, The Heart is in the business of helping corporates survive the changes that are disrupting them. And they want to help the innovators within those corporates to move at the speed they want by bridging them with the startup ecosystem.
Basically, The Heart is a collaboration center that aims to foster business relations between corporations and ready-to-scale startups in Europe and Israel (with an upcoming London launch, and an eye on New York and Singapore). In the words of The Heart Co-founder and CEO, Tomasz Rudolf, they connect everybody with everybody.
While they work with both corporates and startups, they are in the business of helping corporates find ready to pilot startups that provide solutions to their needs. Essentially, with the relationships that they have built over the years going both ways, they are able to help corporations find the right startup match.
In an a recent AMWeekly episode, Rudolf listed corporations in financial services, retail, health tech, and more recently, real estate, as the predominant industries The Heart works with.
Although, according to Rudolf, they are constantly going industry to industry, looking to open up the corporate ecosystem to the industries that technological advancements and startups are disrupting.
Tomasz Rudolf is careful to differentiate The Heart from brokers that take business from whichever side would give it to them. The Heart, quite simply, is on the corporate side — described by Rudolf as a single point of contact to the startup world, representing the interests of the corporate, facilitating the process of selecting a startup partner.
“We try to translate the needs [of the corporate] to the startup ecosystem, and then translate the capabilities of the startups for the corporate, so [our] job — just like a headhunter whose job is to facilitate the hiring of a candidate — we facilitate the job of defining who really want by defining the brief, and then by scouting those startups and bringing them to the corporates on a pre-selected shortlist,” The Heart co-founder and CEO explains.
According to Rudolf, corporates didn’t want a “startup kindergarten,” which in essence, was The Heart’s initial business model. They wanted hands-on, ready to pilot, ready to implement solutions.
This meant that The Heart had to build stronger relationships with both corporates and startups to understand what the former needs, and what the latter can offer.
We, from Avenew Media, have been partnering with The Heart for their content marketing and production, like video content to The Heart TV.
The partnership serves as a model for other start ups, new corporations, and brands on the value of using video and other similar content on taking the lead within their industry.
According to Rudolf, sharing your knowledge thru video content adds value to your brand, and more importantly, makes you visible. He also makes it clear that sharing your knowledge doesn’t necessarily mean sharing trade secrets.
“If they [competition] will focus on only copying you, (…) they will only always look at your back,” he says. “So I don’t think sharing what you do or lessons that you learned can be dangerous.”
The Heart CEO emphasizes that sharing valuable knowledge is the way to build trust for relationships, build your personal brand, and increase your overall impact.
Rudolf said it best, “Lone innovators will be gone innovators.” Much like how people have gravitated toward sharing economies, corporations can glean a lot from the startup ecosystem when it comes to specific company needs that they may not have the structure for.
What stumbling blocks do you see in the operations of your company? Have you looked at how this kind of relationship can possibly help?
Watch our whole interview with Tomasz Rudolf here:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tRKqnkbsBNw%26gt%3B